Step-by-Step Guide to Installing Django, Creating a Project and App, and Building a Simple HelloWorld Page

This article provides a concise, practical guide for beginners to set up a Django development environment, create a project and an application, and build a minimal HelloWorld web page.

First, install Django in an Anaconda‑managed Python environment using the command: pip install django Next, create a new Django project named myproject with: django-admin startproject myproject After the project is generated, a directory myproject and a manage.py file appear. The key configuration files you will edit are settings.py (for database, static files, and installed apps) and urls.py (for URL routing).

Create a new app called app inside the project: python manage.py startapp app The app scaffold includes several modules such as migrations, admin.py, apps.py, models.py, tests.py, and views.py. For a simple web page you will mainly work with views.py (view functions) and models.py (database models).

To display a HelloWorld page, first register the app in myproject/settings.py. Then add a view function in app/views.py:

from django.shortcuts import render

def test(request):
    return render(request, 'test.html')

Define the URL pattern in myproject/urls.py to map the route app/test to the view:

from django.urls import path
from app import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('app/test', views.test),
]

When the server runs, accessing http://127.0.0.1:8000/app/test will render the test.html template.

Start the development server with: python manage.py runserver 8000 Open a browser and navigate to 127.0.0.1:8000/app/test to see the result. The article concludes with a screenshot of the running page and a note that a more complete project will be introduced later.